Saturday, February 28, 2009

The best interests of the child saying In social work terms is like “Abracadabra” to a magician. This phrase, cause sheriffs, judges, lawyers and professionals that deal with children to cringe and agree unreservedly with every word that social services say like they have no will or mind of their own. They should be ashamed to call themselves servants of the people.

That must mean the social services think they are perfect and a law onto themselves.

Has nothing penetrated through to our members of parliaments that they allowed this law to be passed?

How many times have social services found to be not working to their own policies.

How many children have been adopted and been lost to their parents and the social services were to blame with inaccurate statements.

How many children have been removed wrongly by social services?

How many children have been proven to be abused in care?

Now see for yourself it is disgusting.

(Quote) Independent Media. But as of April, because of a change in legislation being introduced by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, the media will no longer be able to identify those involved in cases such as the W--------. It will also be illegal for any children currently in care to speak out, even if they feel they are being maltreated. (unquote)

Friday, February 27, 2009

Thursday, February 26, 2009

"At the end of the day, we've got an inadequate workforce," he said. "There's no specialist training in child and adolescent psychology in New Zealand and it's a gap."

Can somebody tell this psycho nutbar that all responsible and loving parents are well trained in common sense family psychology. We don't need some dickwack academic dictating to us on the correct nurturing process for healthy and well balanced children. The left despises the thought of parents putting in place childhood boundaries, because they want the tentacles of big brother government in every household. That makes it easier for the state to control the family unit, meanwhile radical feminists do their best to create a huge gravy train fractured family growth business for psychologists and lawyers.

The traditional "boot camp" for young offenders was "arguably the least successful sentence in the Western world", the principal Youth Court judge says.

"It made them healthier, fitter, faster, but they were still burglars, just harder to catch, " Judge Andrew Becroft said.

He said physical programmes backed up by mentoring and family support could work, but New Zealand's corrective training camps, which ran up till 2002, found 92 per cent of young attendees reoffended within a year.

"It was a spectacular, tragic, flawed, failure," he said.

The Government's proposed military-style activity camps, introduced this month as part of its 100-day urgency plan, has worried some justice and youth experts, who say overseas and local experience show military-style boot camps do not work.

Judge Becroft made it clear he was not commenting on government policy, but said any debate on the merits of a so-called "boot camp" must be clear on what was being discussed.

An outdoor, physically challenging programme run by quality instructors, combined with intense family therapy, drug and alcohol counselling, education and other support could be beneficial.

Kim Workman, of Reducing Crime and Punishment, said American experience showed that when the military-style "short, sharp, shock" approach was combined with mentoring and after-care, it still made no difference at all.

A physical programme based on a therapeutic model could be beneficial, he said, and there were already a handful of outdoor-based programmes in the country that were working well.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett agreed the old boot camps lacked the necessary follow-up support to work.

But the Government's proposed military-style activity camps would be followed by six to nine months of intensive mentoring, she said.

"At no point are we going to throw them in there, get them fit, beat them around a little bit and send them back on the street, that's just not it at all."

Ms Bennett has said the three-month camps for the country's 40 most dangerous young offenders would use army-type facilities and training methods to teach self-discipline, personal responsibility and community values as well as literacy, numeracy and drug and alcohol support.

Ms Bennett agreed the proposal was contentious and welcomed healthy public debate. She said she had been congratulated by police and army personnel who strongly support the scheme.

The policy is a favourite of Prime Minister John Key, who raised it in his state of the nation speech last year, talking about the "1000 ticking time bombs" of youth offenders on the streets.

Auckland University psychologist Ian Lambie agreed boot camps alone would not work but could be effective with long-term follow-up. He said the Defence Force would need support to deal with the highest-risk youths, and more skilled clinical psychologists and social workers were needed.

"At the end of the day, we've got an inadequate workforce," he said. "There's no specialist training in child and adolescent psychology in New Zealand and it's a gap."

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

This is just another example of judicial sexism. If the offender was a man then the sympathetic female judge would not consider name suppression. The court does not consider the feelings of children of fathers that are falsely accused by a gender bias justice system.

A 36-year-old mother who had sex with an under-age boy has been allowed to keep her interim name suppression for the sake of her own two daughters.

The girls are aged 10 and 15 and were described as vulnerable during the suppression appeal before Justice Christine French in the High Court at Christchurch today.

When the woman pleaded guilty on January 16, District Court Judge Stephen Erber refused suppression but allowed the interim order to continue until the appeal could be heard.

Justice French said the judge was likely to have reached a different conclusion about suppression if he had been given the additional material that was now available to the High Court.

The woman admitted the charge of having sexual connection with a boy aged 15 about September 6. The two had been at a Linwood address on an evening when they had alcohol and party pills, and then had sex.

The woman said the boy had helped himself to the pills and had initiated the sex. She admitted having sex with the boy when the police spoke to her, and said it was “the biggest mistake of my life”.

The woman is due to be sentenced in the District Court next Friday and defence counsel Gilly Ferguson said today she would be seeking permanent suppression at that hearing if an interim order were granted today.

Submissions from counsel, and medical and psychiatric reports were put before the judge.

Mrs Ferguson said the woman’s daughters had been distressed when the mother had discussed the case with them recently and she had mentioned the possibility of her name being published.

The reports mentioned the possibility of the girls facing ridicule, bullying, criticism by peers, and the desire of parents for their children to discontinue their association.

“We are dealing with one isolated moment in the life of a mother who slipped from the decent standards she had previously observed,” she said.

Prosecutor Shannon-Leigh Litt said the crown had sympathy for the two children who would be particularly vulnerable if the name was published.

Justice French said the fact that a woman had been charged with under-age sex was unusual and was likely to attract significant notoriety.

But she said it was an isolated incident and there appeared to be no need for publicity to “flush out” further offending.

“I am satisfied this is a rare case where the need to protect the appellant’s daughters displaces the public interest in revealing the appellant’s name,” she said.

The order remains interim, and a decision on permanent suppression will need to be made by the sentencing judge in the District Court on Friday.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

POLICE OFFICERS ought to be ardent supporters of legislation to take guns away from domestic abuse suspects. After all, it's the officers' responsibility to uphold the law, and abuse suspects use handguns and rifles to break it at alarming rates; half of the 75 domestic-violence-related homicides...

Monday, February 23, 2009

United Nations Discovers Most Human Traffic Perpetrators are Women

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — Surprisingly, the perpetrators behind human trafficking around the world are often women, the U.N. reported Thursday.

Women are the majority of traffickers in almost a third of the 155 nations the U.N. surveyed. They accounted for more than 60 percent of the human trafficking convictions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

For many, human trafficking is a world they had been pulled into themselves.

"Women commit crimes against women, and in many cases the victims become the perpetrators, " Antonio Maria Costa, director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. "They become the matrons of the business and they make money. It's like a drug addiction."

Most of the world's nations reported some form of "modern slavery" last year involving mainly the sex trade or forced labor.

And the number of victims should grow as the global financial crisis deepens, Costa said.

The report by Costa's office was based largely on human trafficking convictions reported to the U.N. between September 2007 and July 2008. About 22,500 victims were rescued during that time. About four of every five reported cases involved sexual exploitation; most of the rest involved forced labor.

But Costa's agency gave no overall figures for how many millions of people might be affected. He said most countries' conviction rates for human trafficking rarely exceed 1.5 per 100,000 people.

Two of every five countries covered in the report had not recorded a single conviction from 2007 to 2008.
"Either these countries are blind to the problem or they are ill-equipped to deal with it," Costa said.

"We only see the monster's tail," he said. "How many hundreds of thousands of victims are slaving away in sweatshops, fields, mines, factories, or trapped in domestic servitude? Their numbers will surely swell as the economic crisis deepens the pool of potential victims."

The report's release coincided with the appointment Thursday of Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino as a U.N. goodwill ambassador to help Costa's office fight human trafficking. Sorvino, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1989 with a degree in Chinese, won an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1995's "Mighty Aphrodite."

"Until a few years ago, I blissfully believed that slavery was a thing of the past. ... Well, obviously I was terribly wrong," she said after Costa draped a blue-ribboned medal around her neck.

Sorvino told how the stories of trafficked children hit her particularly hard since becoming a mother with two young children herself.

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," she said, repeating a famous statement by Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday was celebrated Thursday.

The report also pointed out that women and girls suffer most from sexual abuse. About 20 percent of victims globally were children, mainly in Southeast Asia's Mekong region and parts of Africa.

Costa, who serves as the U.N.'s chief crime fighter, said it's difficult to get nations to address human trafficking because "it's at the crossroads" of other complex occurrences such as human migration and prostitution.

Sixty-three percent of the nations in the report had adopted some laws against human trafficking. The U.N. said most did so only after its protocol against human trafficking entered into force in December 2003.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

When is New Zealand going to take fatherhood seriously? The hateful feminist regime of Miss Klark has caused so much damage for men I doubt it can be ever repaired. Tim Barnett a strange homosexual Labour MP who helped make my city Christchurch the parole capital of our country has said Labour does not help fathers. Will the new National Government endorse fathers’ rights? Pigs will fly.

Ministers have ordered Whitehall to "dad-proof" its family policies, amid concerns that schools, hospitals and other services are preventing fathers from taking a more active role in their children's lives.

Civil servants have been asked to make sure the government is targeting its parenting initiatives at fathers as well as mothers to break the current "mother-domination" of family policy.

Plans already under way include an order to schools to send children's reports to their absent fathers as well as their home addresses, and moves to encourage maternity wards to let fathers spend their child's first night at the hospital instead of being sent home alone.

Campaigners for fatherhood welcomed the plans but were unhappy that the government was still refusing to improve paid paternity leave beyond the current two weeks.

Beverley Hughes, the minister for families, said: "Everything is so mother-dominated in public services and we're trying to change that. The benefits for children of fathers being involved in their early lives are considerable: not just for boys, but there is a particular effect with sons. The relationship with the father is important for a boy's attainment, behaviour and emotional resilience."

She said she wanted to change attitudes because, for some men, the school gate or children's centre could feel as alienating as male-dominated workplaces are for women.

"When we had small children, my husband would sometimes be asked at the healthcentre where the mother was. I hope that level of suspicion is not there now, but fathers tell me there is still some resistance," she said.

Policies being developed include:

• Plans for schools to send children's reports to fathers who live elsewhere.

• A new government-run website for dads to mirror mums.net, the online community for mothers. Its working title is "dads' dialogue".

• The Department of Health is looking at ways hospitals can make it possible for fathers to stay the night after their partner has given birth.

• Activities at children centres will target fathers specifically.

• A dads' version of a baby handbook which has in the past been given to new mothers is being published with the slogan: "Because they don't come with instructions".

• A campaign to get employers to allow more fathers to work flexibly.

• A drive to encourage dads to read to their children.

• Training for all professionals who work with children on how to communicate with dads as well as mums.

• Promoting childcare services to black and minority ethnic fathers.

Evidence shows that today's children are spending increasing amounts of time with their fathers, although mothers still provide the bulk of the childcare.

The last major survey of parents' roles was the Office for National Statistics time use survey in 2001, which found that mothers accounted for more than three-quarters of time spent on childcare activities during the week and two-thirds at weekends. On average, fathers of under-fives spent one hour and 20 minutes a day on childcare activities during the week and two hours and 30 minutes a day at weekends.

Duncan Fisher, founder of the Fatherhood Institute, said: "Fathers' influence on children is crucial to their development, and if you ignore that, you sacrifice a chance to help children.

"The current health and education systems engage with whatever parent turns up. This new plan is to make the effort to talk to both.

"Many fathers feel like the odd one out at the school gate. Fathers are marginalised from the very beginning."

He added that the biggest change the government could make would be to extend paid paternity leave for fathers, who currently qualify for two weeks' paid leave. They can also take up to 13 weeks of unpaid parental leave, but many families cannot afford that option, he said.

"The paternity system is hopeless. We have the biggest deficit between men and women anywhere in the world. That sets the scene for mums to scale down their careers, and fathers to become the breadwinners. It makes a formidable economic force for mothers to leave the workforce. It's hopelessly unfair and it pushes parents apart."

Hughes said that the government was currently challenging an EU regulation which prevents benefits being removed, so that it can replace some paid maternity leave with shared parental leave, allowing mothers and fathers to share paid leave as it suits them. Simply adding extra paid paternity leave was not being considered because of the "financial consequences", she said.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Dear Peter: Our thanks to Jeremy Swanson from Canada for alerting us to this report by University of British Columbia professor, Dr. Ed Kruk.
***************

CHILD CUSTODY, ACCESS AND PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE SEARCH FOR A JUST AND EQUITABLE STANDARD

Edward Kruk, M.S.W., Ph.D. The University of British Columbia December, 2008

This paper was commissioned by the Father Involvement Research Alliance (FIRA) based at the University of Guelph . Funding support for FIRA and this paper was provided through a Community University Research Alliance grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The intent of this paper is to promote informed dialogue and debate. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of FIRA or of other researchers/collaborators associated with FIRA. Communications can be addressed to the author.

Entitled "Child Custody, Access, and Parental Responsibility: The Search for a Just and Equitable Standard,", it has been published December, 2008 by Fatherhood Involvement Research Alliance (FIRA). Edward Kruk, professor of social work at the University of British Columbia , proposes a four-pillar approach to child custody determination in Canada (or elsewhere for that matter):

a rebuttable legal presumption of joint physical custody after divorce

parenting plans, mediation and intervention/ support in high conflict cases

shared parenting education and judicial determination in cases of established abuse, along with enforcement of shared parental responsibility orders

The paper provides an empirical foundation for, and a step-by-step process, for implementation of an equal parenting bill.

The paper examines the issues, surveys approaches in UK, USA, Sweden and Australia, examines Canadian Child custody legislation at a provincial level, reviews Canadian efforts to make changes, and critiques the traditional sole custody approach as a basis leading up to the universal four-pillar approach for Equal Parenting.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

As many readers know the Family Court does not hand over court transcripts , professional writer reports and many matters are manipulated in the judges' minutes. All done in the cosy and secretive judge chambers. This is a dishonest Court and the reason why so many men view the Court, as a Court of Injustice. It is impossible to clear your name against any allegation, because the Family Court simply shuts up shop.For example a judge involved in my case said " I am not inclined at this stage to order the release of the report as sought." The report was requested by Doctors helping the family, including my young badly affected PAS children!

I applaud Jadie's petition approach and believe me my anger which is misinterpreted by many as unjustified could be understood if people knew the sinister dealings that judges' get up to in the New Zealand Family Court. I was a much loved father before WW3 started in 2001. I have tried to get judge transcripts from that date until now without little success. People say, us dads are damaged angry units, I say that is not true, as why would I have custody of my teenage daughter. Not one person in the Family Court has ever witnessed the strong bond of LOVE between us. I have been to Court over 200 hundred times , but no one has ever bothered to find the truth that is , I am a GOOD DAD and the sick system is wrong.

Here is a petition regarding a request for a judge to consider the release of a transcript. How can the family court continue to get away this?

Dear dad4justice,

Thank you for signing the "Hand over the transcript Judge Crosbie" petition at iPetitions.com website.
Your signature is valuable and makes a real difference. Please encourage others to sign the petition as well. To do that, just forward the text below to everyone who might be interested:

------- FORWARD THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS -------
Hi,

I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Hey Minister and Judge what about white men who have been done over by a corrupt and sinister Family Court? This is more unlawful gender discrimination from a Court system that is family destructive and evil. How long can it be allowed to continue? Shame on you all!! Kids deserve better, ask mine!

Justice Minister Simon Power has called for an urgent report from officials on a top judge's suggestion that programmes to stop domestic violence should be redesigned for one-off offenders and for Maori and Asian men.

Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier said on Monday that the current standard group programmes for men whose partners were granted protection orders against them did not suit all offenders.

"I believe we should screen in order to determine whether attendance is likely to be effective," he said.

He suggested different approaches for "one-off acts of violence" and for Maori and Asian men, noting that almost a quarter of protection orders were granted against Maori respondents even though Maori made up only 14.6 per cent of the population.

Mr Power said he rang Judge Boshier yesterday and was keen to meet him to discuss his ideas.

He has also asked Ministry of Justice officials for written advice on the issue.

Agencies running anti-violence programmes yesterday generally agreed with Judge Boshier's comments, but said they would need more resources.

"What is needed is more funding to explore that," said the director of Friendship House in Manukau, the Rev Vicki Sykes.

She said her agency already ran a Samoan-language programme but it did not get any Government funding to set it up.

"It took three years to get that programme approved. Once we got it approved, now we are training up more facilitators who can speak Samoan so we can increase our capacity, and we are close to being able to open up a second group," she said.

"We are also working with Indian community groups to support them in the development of their programmes and training some of their facilitators with our team." She said Maori agencies in Otahuhu and Mangere also ran separate programmes for Maori offenders.

The men's programme co-ordin-ator at Preventing Violence in the Home, Aaron Steed-man, said he already directed men who were either deaf, extremely angry or who spoke little English into one-to-one counselling instead of group sessions.

"I've had a Burmese man who had an interpreter with him and we spent 13 sessions together," he said. "A lot of it is just explaining the differences in the law between the two countries. They just served this piece of paper on him, he didn't know what it was."

Mr Steedman said court bailiffs who served protection orders should try to make sure the respondents understood what they meant.

Meanwhile, Mr Power said he planned a second bill on domestic violence.

He introduced a bill before Christmas which would allow police to issue on-the-spot safety orders ordering offenders to leave their homes for up to five days.

Thirteen year old dad not uncommon

The story of a boy in the UK who became a father at 13, sent shockwaves around Britain, but statistics show there are large numbers of young parents also in New Zealand.Baby faced Alfie Patten's daughter, Maisie, was conceived when he was just 12. Her mother, Shantelle, was 15 when she gave birth.ONE News asked Statistics New Zealand to go back through the records to find out the age of New Zealand's youngest parents.The never before published data shows that in 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available, New Zealand had 15 new fathers aged 13-14.That is the most on record.The figures are even higher for girls.In the same year, one new mum was registered at 12 years old, six at 13, and 45 at 15 - which is Shantelle's age.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Sadly the New Zealand Family Court will not recognize the existence of PAS, because they use it as weapon of war so they can raise the male suicide rate. Shame on you Judge Boshier you are a total let down for so many damaged children! How many examples of children stuffed up by the corrupt family court do you want Judge Boshier? Help me dad, said my daughters, how do you sleep at night Mr judge freak?

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2009/13/c8701.html

Abused children waiting to be rescued by the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome

TORONTO, Feb. 13 /CNW/ - The first Canadian International Symposium for
Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) will be held in Toronto at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre from March 27-29, 2009. Speakers from the fields of psychology, family law, and mediation will be making presentations to attorneys and mental health professionals. Parents whose children suffer from this mental health condition are very welcome to attend to conference "Parents that abuse children with parental alienation are a danger to our entire society," said Joe Goldberg, Host and Founder of the symposium. "There
are literally hundreds of thousands of children who are victims of parental alienation abuse and family law attorneys and mental health professionals are the only ones who can rescue them. This symposium will provide the information on how to best protect these children."
Participants to this three-day symposium will hear such topics discussed as: 'Mediation Strategies in Managing PAS Disputes,' 'Treatment for Alienated Children,' and 'Doing what is Right for the Children, and Knowing When to do it.' Speakers include: Amy Baker, Ph.D., a prominent psychologist in developmental psychology, Pamela Stuart-Mills Hoch, M.A., and Bob Hoch, M.A. co-founders of the Rachel Foundation for Family Reintegration, and David L. Levy, J.D., a pioneer in the field of children's rights. With over twenty
speakers in attendance, everyone will come away with new knowledge about how children are being psychologically abused by a parent, and how it can be prevented. A media room will be available for interviews with speakers and other notables in attendance.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

To quote the learned Mr Baskerville ; Almost daily we see men released after decades in prison because DNA testing proves they were wrongly convicted. And they are the fortunate ones. While DNA testing has righted some wrongs, the corruption of the rape industry is so systemic that, as last year’s Duke University case shows, hard evidence of innocence is no barrier to prosecution and conviction. It is well documented that feminist crime lab technicians fabricate and doctor evidence to frame men they know to be innocent.[21]"

As the New Zealand government is thinking about a DNA database, I think the existing regime of feminists are going to have a field day when they get control of DNA samples. Food for thought kiwi law makers.

The Dangerous Rise of Sexual PoliticsIslamic radicalism may be creating a “clash of civilizations,” but sexual radicalism is undermining the social foundation of all civilization.

By Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.**Stephen Baskerville teaches political science at Patrick Henry College. He is the author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland Books).

“All politics is on one level sexual politics.” — George Gilder, 1986

Four decades into the boldest social experiment ever undertaken in the Western democracies, the full impact of what was once quaintly known as “women’s liberation” is at last becoming clear. The political class of both the Left and Right have colluded to limit the debate to a series of innocuous controversies: job discrimination, equal pay, affirmative action. Only abortion has any depth, and that debate has been mired in stalemate.

Meanwhile, beneath the political radar screen, the real consequences are finally emerging: a massive restructuring of the social order, demographic trends that threaten the very survival of Western civilization, and perhaps least noticed, an exponential growth in the size and power of the state — the state at its most bureaucratic and tyrannical.

Feminism has now positioned itself as the vanguard of the Left, shifting the political discourse from the economic and racial to the social and increasingly the sexual. What was once a socialistic assault on property and enterprise has become a social and sexual attack on the family, marriage, and masculinity. This marks a truly new kind of politics, the most personal and thus potentially the most total politics ever devised: the politics of private life and sexual relations.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

By Stefano Ambrogi LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A school boy of 13 has become one of Britain's youngest dads, underlining concern about the rate of teenage pregnancies in the country. Four-foot Alfie Patten, who looks considerably younger than his age,...

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Quote '-In fact, our constitution doesn’t allow us to work with male victims,"

But studies show that both males and females are victims of domestic violence? This is blatant sexism from the feminist quarter. When are these hateful gender bias and vindictive ideologist agencies going to stop putting the knife into the male species?For the sake of the children we need balance.

“We have told the director-general we have to relinquish the funding because we cannot work with males and the constant interference by the department also has a lot to do with it,” Ms Spicer said.

“I really don’t know what it means for the service.”

Ms Gaunt said men were not neglected by the service, but referred to other agencies.

“Our workers are not trained to work with men - some days we have more than 25 women in our safe room at Gosford.

“Can you imagine how traumatised they would be to put a male in there? It is bureaucracy gone totally insane.”

THE Central Coast domestic violence intervention team began in 2003 when the Premier’s Department asked the court assistance scheme to accommodate it to support women and children experiencing domestic violence who had come to the attention of Brisbane Water police.

Funding was originally provided for two years for one worker but good results during the first 12 months saw more funding made available for a further part-time worker.

In 2005 the funding responsibility was transferred from the Premier’s Department to the Community Services Department.

The program has since received two police awards for its innovative service.

An agreement was signed recently to run the service until 2012 but, before the ink was dry, the department sent a document outlining changes it wanted to the program.

One significant change was the service was to work with men, a directive that would put the service in breach of funding it also received from Legal Aid.

The team’s Kaye Spicer and Pat Gaunt said they tried to negotiate with the department but had hit a brick wall. In desperation, they turned to Terrigal State Liberal MP Chris Hartcher for help.

A COMMUNITY Service Department spokeswoman said a decision about who would take over the service in the long term would be made as soon as possible.

She said services would not be disrupted and the department worked extensively with the Central Coast domestic assistance scheme to resolve issues about its funding agreement.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
MEXICO CITY, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights.
Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”
"In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis," he said. "In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights."
"Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family," one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.
The comments followed close on the heels of the World Meeting of Families, which was held in Mexico City in January, and which strongly reaffirmed the importance of the traditional family and its indispensible role in transmitting values to the next generation. It was opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who observed that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births were contributing to the rise of violence and crime in Mexico.
Leonardo Casco, a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a citizen of Honduras, told LifeSiteNews that he wasn't surprised that the UNFPA was denying the crisis in the family.
"They definitely have to deny that there is a crisis in the family, because they have created the crisis," he said.
Calling the UNFPA "bureaucrats at the service of death," Casco observed that "after 45 years of birth control, the pill, disrespect for marriage for the family, for children, etc, this is the result. Because of that we have violence, war, lack of respect of women, children."
Through their promotion and distribution of contraceptives the UNFPA has become "a birth control agency at the service of the most powerful countries" said Casco. "They have destroyed the family, values, this is undeniable, it's what everyone says ... but they always have to deny it."
Regarding Hoekman’s comments about “human rights,” Casco responded that UNFPA bureaucrats “have invented a series of new 'human rights',” that did not exist when the concept was defined in 1948, “with which they wish to justify all of their actions.”
The UNFPA recently celebrated the restoration of US support after seven years, during which they were denied funding by the Bush administration. UNFPA has cooperated with and even helped to subsidize China's One Child Policy, which persecutes and performs forced abortions on women who have more than one child.
In addition to its support for forced abortions, the UNFPA has helped to administer forced sterilizations in South America and is involved in the distribution and promotion of contraceptives and sterilization worldwide, with a focus on poorer countries.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Quote "Too often the children are used as pawns as parents try to inflict pain on each other."

Sadly my children were "used as pawns" in a sick family court gravy train for over seven painful years. The lawyers and psychologists done very nicely, because they put the blood money first. They said, stuff the truth, which let down the children. The sinister and corrupt police dished me out plenty of unnecessary "pain". Well done you cruel and greedy animals, my mother died a heartbroken paternal grand mother and the damage to my children is now severe. No help now the truth is evident you filthy snakes. Where are the child counsel lawyers now I have custody you low life two faced scum ? The family court has turned its back on my children now ! They don't care about the ruined kids !! No wonder fathers view the family court as the evil cess pit where lies and false allegations cannot be challenged much to the detriment of the children.

Kids must come first in custody battles

PARENTING: Equal parenting is a goal worth pursuing but only if both parents are fit to share custody

More than any other subject I've written about, the topic of fathers' rights has generated the most response.

In 2006, I penned a special report on fathers' struggles to get access to their children. To this day, I still receive e-mails about that series. The Internet has spread it far and wide.

Some of the mail is from distraught fathers; others from organizations working for equal parenting rights. Some are from Europe; most are from North America.

I recently received a phone call from a man who said he was in England. Originally from the U.S., he had contacted an underground railroad of sorts that took him through Canada and then into Europe where he was to start a new life. He no longer trusted the founder of this "railroad," operated through the Planetary Alliance for Fathers in Exile, and wanted him exposed. I won't go into detail about the circumstances of this father in England because his story, like many, is long and complicated.

Stories of perjury, accusations of abuse and mounting legal fees are the norm in many of the stories that cross my desk. Some of these stories are from men right here in London. The most frustration comes from dealing with the courts.

Recently, a Vancouver Island man lost custody of his children because he informed the courts that his ex-wife was punishing the kids by spanking them with a kitchen spatula, which is illegal. "The use of an instrument to discipline a child is unacceptable under any circumstances," the judge said. But he then told the man he shouldn't have tattled on his wife, but discussed the matter with her.

It's hard to have a rational discussion when, as the courts heard, the two parents "hate each other." The judge also said the children had grown bitter toward their father, but he didn't believe the bitterness was caused by parental alienation.

Dennis Valenta, a Clinton man who recently opened an office in that town to advocate for fathers, has just launched a commerical on a local radio station calling for legislation that would make equal access a goal.

There is a London group called Not All Dads are Deadbeats that held its first meeting last week. It wants to create more awareness about the need for equal parenting. This is a goal worth pursuing, but only if both parents are fit to share custody. Children benefit from having two loving parents in their life.

Ultimately it will still be up to the courts to decide who is fit and who isn't and that may mean leaving some parents, both male and female, out of the picture.

Sometimes people within the system are simply out to take money from couples in the process of divorce and arranging custody. The antagonism often increases once the courts are involved. As angry as people are at their ex-spouses, in cases where both have had nurturing relationships with the children, moms and dads should set aside their scraps and come up with an arrangement that is best for the kids -- not what is best for themselves.

Too often the children are used as pawns as parents try to inflict pain on each other. Everyone loses when that happens.

It's hard to have a rational discussion when, as the courts heard, the two parents 'hate each other.'

Monday, February 9, 2009

The Australian Institute of Criminology has reviewed the most recent child homicide statistics from its National Homicide Monitoring Program. The new data shows that during 2006-07, eleven child homicides were perpetrated by a mother, while five perpetrators were fathers, and another five were de-facto partners of the mother who lived with the child. Importantly, no child victims were killed by a complete stranger during this period.

Greg Andresen, spokesman for radio program Dads on the Air said, “Stories are appearing regularly in the media inferring that the safety of children is put at risk when the courts award sole custody to fathers or when shared custody is given to both parents. These figures show that, in terms of child homicides, this simply isn’t the case. Children are three times safer when they are with their fathers than when they are with other custodians.”

Dads in Distress co-ordinator for Western Sydney, Phil York said, “Whenever a child is killed, it is a tragic, devastating, incomprehensible event. We need to examine the reasons why parents sometimes kill their children: their mental health issues and the social pressures that might lead them to commit this most horrific of acts. The real tragedy is that our health and social services aren’t finding these parents and helping them before it’s too late.”

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Ads taken out for ‘anti-smacking’ repeal

Sunday, 08 February 2009Lobby group Family First has placed advertisements in all three Sunday newspapers calling for the repeal of the “anti-smacking law”.The advertisement described four cases where parents were investigated by Child, Youth and Family following the repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which removed the defence of reasonable force for parents who physically punish their children.A late amendment to the law added the proviso that police had the discretion not to prosecute complaints against a parent where the offence was considered to be inconsequential.The cases referred to CYF included two where parents admitted smacking their children as a last resort and one where CYF investigated when her child told a friend’s mother he had been smacked.The fourth involved a child complainant who was found to have been angry with her mother for being grounded.“The tragedy is that families are seeking help in their role as parents but as soon as they acknowledge that they smack or have smacked, they are immediately being referred to CYF and their children are being removed,” Family First director Bob McCoskrie said.CYF eventually closed the investigation in all four cases, the advertisements say.A fifth example described a case where a woman was suspended by a community centre for what Family First says was a tap on the back of the hand.She was eventually reinstated after the employer dropped the case after her lawyer intervened.Mr McCoskrie called for the repeal of the law, saying it was penalising good parents while not tackling the real causes of child abuse.-NZPA

Friday, February 6, 2009

Family Court review after death of Darcey Freeman

February 06, 2009Article from: Australian Associated PressTHE Federal Government has asked for a review of the Family Court's handling of a case involving the family of a young girl who was thrown from Melbourne's West Gate Bridge.Darcey Freeman, four, died after she plunged 58 metres from the bridge last week. Her father Arthur Phillip Freeman has been charged with her murder.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland has asked his department to review the family's case. "Family law is an extremely difficult area and if there is anything we can learn from this tragedy to improve how the system is run we will not hesitate to take the necessary action," Mr McClelland said.Victorian Premier John Brumby welcomed the review.

"Anybody that's got family or friends who dealt with the Family Court, you know the system isn't perfect, I think it's very timely to review this case and to see the way in which it was managed," Mr Brumby said. "It's a federal responsibility and I think the sooner that review's undertaken the better."

Mr Brumby reiterated his desire to see a tribute to Darcey and all children built into Children's Week, which is held in the first week of October.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

It's been weeks since the last one, so on Sunday, The New York Times Magazine featured yet another cheery, upbeat article on single mothers. As with all its other promotional pieces on single motherhood over the years, the Times followed a specific formula to make this social disaster sound normal, blameless and harmless -- even brave.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Clinical & Research News

Men Shouldn't Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence

Joan Arehart-Treichel In addressing intimate partner violence, the focus is usuallyon women who are physically battered by husbands or boyfriends.However, women sometimes hurt their partners as well.Women are doing virtually everything these days that men are—working asdoctors, lawyers, and rocket scientists; flying helicoptersin combat; riding horses in the Kentucky Derby. And physicallyassaulting their spouses or partners.In fact, when it comes to nonreciprocal violence between intimatepartners, women are more often the perpetrators.These findings on intimate partner violence come from a studyconducted by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control andPrevention (CDC). The lead investigator was Daniel Whitaker,Ph.D., a behavioral scientist and team leader at the NationalCenter for Injury Prevention and Control (which is part of theCDC). Results were published in the May Journal of Public Health.In 2001, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Healthattempted to amass data about the health of a nationally representativesample of 14,322 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28.The study also asked subjects to answer questions about romanticor sexual relationships in which they had engaged during theprevious five years and whether those relationships had involvedviolence.Of those subjects, 11,370 reported having had heterosexual relationships andalso provided answers to the violence-related questions. SoWhitaker and his colleagues decided to use the responses fromthese 11,370 subjects for a study into how much violence isexperienced in intimate heterosexual partner relationships,who the instigators are, and whether physical harm accrues from theviolence.The 11,370 subjects, Whitaker and his colleagues found, reportedon 18,761 relationships, of which 76 percent had been nonviolentand 24 percent violent. That almost a quarter of the subjectshad engaged in violent relationships may seem high to some people,but "the rates we found are similar to those of other studiesof late adolescents and young adults, a time period when interpersonal-violencerates are at their highest," Whitaker told Psychiatric News.Also, he added, "these rates demonstrate the magnitude of interpersonalviolence as a health and social problem."

Furthermore, Whitaker discovered, of the 24 percent of relationshipsthat had been violent, half had been reciprocal and half hadnot. Although more men than women (53 percent versus 49 percent)had experienced nonreciprocal violent relationships, more womenthan men (52 percent versus 47 percent) had taken part in onesinvolving reciprocal violence.Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percentof the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women.This finding surprised Whitaker and his colleagues, they admittedin their study report.As for physical injury due to intimate partner violence, itwas more likely to occur when the violence was reciprocal thannonreciprocal. And while injury was more likely when violencewas perpetrated by men, in relationships with reciprocal violenceit was the men who were injured more often (25 percent of thetime) than were women (20 percent of the time). "This is important asviolence perpetrated by women is often seen as not serious,"Whitaker and his group stressed.Of the study's numerous findings, Whitaker said, "I think themost important is that a great deal of interpersonal violenceis reciprocally perpetrated and that when it is reciprocallyperpetrated, it is much more likely to result in injury thanwhen perpetrated by only one partner."The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, upon whichthis investigation was based, was funded by the National Instituteof Child Health and Human Development with co-funding from 17other federal agencies.An abstract of "Differences in Frequency of Violence and ReportedInjury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal IntimatePartner Violence" is posted at <www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941>